100 YEARS OR MORE?!?!

The other n night on CNN’s LARRY KING LIVE, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) was the guest and he espousing the underpinnings of “The Straight Talk Express” – first off I don’t know why a Dolly Parton Song is being used as part of his campaign slogan-age, but to each his own; the meat of the interview, in my mind, was McCain trying to defend his statement about keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years. Certainly, he didn’t mean it – although we have had troops in Germany and Japan for well over 50 years (but in peacetime, not in the middle of an insurgency that’s lasted longer World War 2, and cost even more – yet has generated less in terms of world changing technology).

What McCain’s biggest problem is when it comes to the illegitimate War in Iraq is that he can’t live down the supposed shame of the VietNam War – especially because he’s tortured and decorated vet of that misbegotten conflict. I’m taking anything whatsoever away from McCain, his struggle, his POW days, his war record – but that armed conflict left a black eye on American foreign policy and military for close to two decades (rehashed by shit like FIRST BLOOD). The US didn’t exactly recover from that, and at the end of the day we’re now good trading partners with VietNam; with normalized diplomatic relations. But the might of the vaunted US armed forces was called into question (however, effectively propagandizes as unstoppable by Hollywood throughout the 80s and 90s).

The current pre-occupation with the Middle East has not only blinded America from its true and present interests across the globe, but the crux of the problem could have been dealt with effectively if a “fuck all y’all” foreign policy wasn’t in effect during the Reagan and Bush years (sure, we’ve been dicking the Middle East since the end of WW2, but it took a new level after Reagan came into office).

So for McCain to claim that we can’t leave without victory (and that MEANS what?) is just ridick!!! No one has even defined what “victory in the Iraq” is supposed to look like. Arabs aren’t cut-out for democracy… I can’t call it when it comes to any place in the whole region is operating under a democracy as entertained by the Greeks. There might be “elections”, but they’re reasonably phony.

And the spiraling costs of the war – in hard dollars, in human lives, in wasted war material, the psychic cost to the nation – doesn’t seem to be factored into McCain’s equation.

Should Barak and Hillary have hard exit strategies? Yeah, but the operative word is strategy – which is something that is usually considered flexible and is oft-revised. No one wants to have the US Military show the pink of its ass, but there’s no problem in turning tail and running – because we’ve done in numerous times before… can anyone same Beirut 1985?